That's the title of an article in the National Law Journal written by Zoe Tillman and Todd Ruger. It's subtitled, "Judges: Budget uncertainty threatens 'everything'."
With the end of the fiscal year less than two weeks away, and absent any clarity from Congress regarding next year's budget, the federal judiciary is preparing for what court officials describe as "the worst-case scenario."
From courthouse closures to cuts in security, employee training and information technology, "you look at everything," Chief Judge William Traxler Jr., chairman of the Judicial Conference of the United States' executive committee, said last week after announcing a series of fresh cost-cutting measures.
The fiscal year ends on September 30. Congress has yet to pass a budget for fiscal year 2014. It's unclear whether mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration, which eliminated $350 million from the judiciary's budget last year, would continue.
Appropriations committees in both houses of Congress approved budgets that would, at a minimum, roughly restore money to the judiciary at pre-sequestration levels. Still, court officials fear a fight among the House, Senate and White House over other budget priorities could lead to a continuing resolution that maintains sequestration cuts or otherwise keeps the judiciary's budget flat.
Earlier coverage of the federal budget sequestration begins at the link.
Last week's NLJ contained, "Nation's Judges Appeal to Obama for Help in Budget Fight," by Tony Mauro.
In a rare public appeal directed at the White House, the Judicial Conference is asking President Barack Obama to be a forceful voice in favor of increased funding for the judicial branch in impending budget battles.
"The judiciary will not have a seat at the table during these budget discussions," wrote Judge John Bates, secretary of the conference, in a letter to the White House dated September 10 and made public on September 12. "It is essential that someone speak for the judiciary, and I respectfully ask that the administration help make the case for an increase in funding above the FY 2013 post-sequestration level for the judiciary."
Experts on the judiciary could not recall the last time that the conference, the policy-making arm of the judicial branch, made such a direct and open plea to a president. Conference officials regularly testify before Congress and have made their concern about budget cuts well known to legislators, but their contacts with the executive branch are seldom public.
"I can think off-hand of no public, written request from the federal judiciary to the president for assistance in arguing the judicial branch's case for increased appropriations" in the modern era, said Russell Wheeler, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Wheeler noted that, by statute (31 U.S.C. 1105,) the president is required to submit the judiciary's budget "without change" to Congress. The judiciary's budget request for fiscal year 2014 totals $7.15 billion, up slightly from the post-sequestration 2013 budget.
"The Judicial Conference has rarely, if ever, appealed so directly to the White House," University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias agreed. Tobias did not think the letter reflected any discontent with the administration's level of support for the judiciary, but rather that federal judges are "fed up with the shoddy treatment that Congress accords them."
Bates, also the new director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, told Obama in the letter that "I hope that you and the Congress will recognize the uncontrollable nature of our workload and provide the resources necessary for the judiciary to perform its essential constitutional functions."
Federal Times reported, "Courts exhaust indigent defense funding," by Sean Reilly.
The federal court system has temporarily run out of money to pay court-appointed lawyers who represent indigent defendants, officials said Tuesday.
The $20 million shortfall for the last two weeks of this fiscal year had been expected, but it means that the courts will start fiscal 2014 on the hook for the same amount, David Sellers, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said at a news conference.
It comes as judges and court managers are bracing for another round of tight money after this year’s sequester. “We are looking at the worst-case scenario” of a continuing resolution, said Chief Judge William Traxler, chairman of the executive committee of the Judicial Conference, the courts’ main policy-making body.
Accordingly, the courts are looking at continued hiring freezes, training cutbacks and other measures to save money, Traxler said. On Tuesday, the conference approved several other cost-cutting steps, including attempting to assure no net growth in the amount of courthouse space, currently at about 29 million square feet, and then trimming it by 3 percent by 2018 on a circuit-by-circuit basis.
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